was unlawful; it was thus that even in the Great Rebellion men cheerfully took the spoiling of their goods; it was thus that in events familiar to us, the members of this place', at different periods, suffered what was unlawful, rather than compromise their principles; and we cherish their memories.

The two events, for which we keep this day as an annual thanksgiving to God, together, strikingly illustrate these principles. 1. That we may safely leave things to God. 2. That there is great risk, that man, by any impatience of his, will mar the blessing which God designs for His Church.

In the plot, from which this day is named, God had permitted things to come to the uttermost; every preparation was made, every scruple removed; a Romanist had solemnly given the answer, that, for so great a benefit to the Church, Romanists too might be sacrificed; the innocent might be slain, so that the guilty majority escaped not; the last feeling of humanity, as one would have thought, that to members of their own Church, was extinguished. The secret was entrusted to but few, was guarded by the most solemn oaths and by the participation of the Holy Eucharist, had been kept for a year and a half, although all the Romanists in England knew that some great plot was being

i In the times of the Great Rebellion and under James II. * Garnet the Jesuit priest [and others. Nicholl on the C, P.]

D

carried on, and were praying for its success; inferior plots had been forbidden by Rome, lest they should mar this great one; no suspicion had been excited, and there was nothing left to excite suspicion, when God employed means the most unlikely, put, just at the last, one lurking feeling of pity for one person in the breast of but one, so that a dark hint was given to that one: and He caused him who gave it, to miscalculate the character of his own brother-in-law, or entrust him with more than he was aware; then He placed fear in that other's breast, so that, through another and distant fear, he shewed the letter which contained this dark hint; then, when the councillors despised the anonymous hint, as an idle tale, He enlightened the mind of the monarch, to discover the dark saying, which to us it seems strange that any beforehand should have unravelled; and when even then the councillors had surveyed the very spot, and discovered nothing, He caused the monarch to persevere, undeterred, until He had brought the whole to light. Yet to see more of this mystery of God's providence, and how He weaves together the intricate web of human affairs, and places long before the hidden springs of things, one must think also, how He ordered that one of these few conspirators should be intermarried with one of the few Romanist peers, and so desired to save him; and how by the conspiracy from which God had shielded the monarch's early life, He

quickened his sense of the present danger; so that while men were marrying, and giving in marriage, and strengthening themselves by alliances, God was preparing the means whereby this kingdom should be saved against the will of those so employed; and while men were plotting against a sacred life, God was laying up in the monarch's soul the thought, which Himself should hereafter kindle to save it. Verily, "a man's heart deviseth his way, but the Lord directeth his steps"." "The ways of man are before the eyes of the Lord, and He pondereth all his goings; his own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sins"." The words of the Psalmist, selected for this day's service, find a striking completion in this history". "God" hid him from the secret counsel of the wicked, from the insurrection of the workers of iniquity-they encourage themselves in an evil matter; they commune of laying snares privily; they say, Who shall see them? they search out iniquities; they accomplish a diligent search; the inward thought of every one of them, and the heart, is deep: but God shall shoot at them with an arrow; suddenly shall they be wounded; so they shall make their own tongue to fall upon themselves."

a Prov. xvi. 9.

b lb. v. 21, 22.

See Barrow's Sermon on this text and day. Serm. xi.

d Ps. lxiv. 2 sqq.

But it yet more illustrates the teaching, and is an argument of encouragement to our Church, how God in two neighbouring countries permitted plots as atrocious to be accomplished. To human sight it is as strange that the massacre of S. Bartholomew should have been perpetrated, as that we should have escaped. The circumstances of that massacre even remind one of that destruction which extorted from the Heathen poet the confession, that it could not have been accomplished, " si fata Deum, si mens non læva fuisset." The chiefs, on whom it fell, were men, the wisest of their age", practised in avoiding surprises, alive to treachery, taught caution by their profession; yet neither past treachery, nor present oft-repeated warnings", nor the half-completed assassination of the chief, as a herald of the

a

e. g. the Admiral Coligny.

Coligny was warned by very many both by word of mouth and letter. Thuanus, 1. lii. p. 805. "He was especially warned sharply in a letter, of the decree of the Papists, that faith was not to be kept with heretics, of the queen's Italian guile, and the king's profaneness, hypocrisy, and cruelty from his youth: a conversation of the king with his mother was reported, in which he had boasted of his playing his part to the queen of Navarre, and had sworn frequently to her, that he would bring them all into her toils." (ib.806.) And again, by those of Rochelle, who, on being civilly put off, applied to the king of Navarre, but in vain; a play was enacted, in which the Protestants were represented as cast into Hell, which “ some interpreted ill," so that F. Earl of Montmorency left Paris." (Ib. 808.)

The admiral. The shot came from the house of a Canon, preceptor of the Duke of Guise, and the assassin was connected with him. Coligny recognized it as the fruit of his reconcilia

impending massacre, nor the forebodings of one d "Dei jussu non unquam creditus," nor the knowledge that their enemies, who had feigned a retreat, were still hard by, nor the menaces reported to them by their spies from those whom they were trusting, nor the bringing them together like sheep for the slaughters, nor the setting a well-known enemy as a guard to their chief", nor the com

tion with him; yet remained secure in Paris." Continuat. de Fleuri H. E. 1. clxiii. §. 5. "The tragedy," said the Vidame de Chartres, "having begun with the wounding of Coligny, would soon end with the massacre of the rest; he therefore advised to quit Paris instantly." (Ib. §. 12.)

The Vidame de Chartres.

e The princes of Guise, who feigned a rupture with the king; "but it was known that they had not left Paris." (Ib. §. 13.)

"Some Romanist courtiers, seeing the Calvinists leave the Church of Notre-Dame, not to hear the Mass at the marriage of the king of Navarre, had told them that their scruples would not last long; their spies had heard from the servants of Charles de Gondy, the king's Chamberlain, that more blood than wine would be spilled at that marriage." (Ib. §. 12. from De Thou, 1. lii. p. 813.)

"The king had made the greater part of the Protestant nobles and gentry lodge near the admiral. The captains of the quarters had orders speedily to mark the lodgings, to take in writing the names of those who professed Calvinism, and to collect them as much as possible in the neigbourhood of Coligny; and H. M. said very loud, that every body might hear, that he forbad any Catholic to approach that neighbourhood, and would have any, who contravened this order, fired upon." (Ib. §. 15.) "These and other indications," adds De Thou, "and the reports every where whispered, had sufficed to warn the Protestants, if they had not been infatuated." (p. 814.)

b Cosseins, one of the greatest enemies of the admiral.